Lava has about 8 percent of the smartphone market in India and expects to sell 2.5 million Xolo phones next year.

"This is the first major milestone for us. Our dream is for 6degrees to be a global company and this is the first step," Niranjan Rao, co-founder of 6degrees was quoted as saying by The Straits Times.

6degrees is a phonebook app that automatically updates itself whenever users or their contacts change their phone numbers or other contact information.

The app is available on Android Apple's iOS in English, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish.

A former investment banker, Rao teamed up with engineer Arun Samudrala to create the app, which currently has about 15,000 users.

Recently, 6degrees won the Singapore leg of global start-up competition Seedstars World and would represent Singapore in that grand finals to be held in February in Geneva where the winning price is USD 500,000 of investment fund.

Its other awards including a SGD50,000 cash grant in January from the Singapore Media Development Authority under the i.Jam start-up funding scheme which recognises innovative start-ups.